


Eurydice

by bertee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Horror, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2018-05-15 17:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5793610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bertee/pseuds/bertee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam starts losing time. [Coda to 9.01]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eurydice

Sam starts losing time.

It's a flicker at first, a blackout lasting the blink of an eye. He reaches up to push his hair out of his eyes and finds his arm back by his side. He looks for the bottle opener and tastes the beer on his tongue. He digs his shovel into the gravedirt then finds it empty.

He doesn't think much of it. People have memory lapses all the time; Bobby used to forget what he walked into a room for and he often finds Dean staring at a blank browser, trying to remember what porn he wanted to find. 

It's nothing out of the ordinary.

**+++**

There's a machete in Sam's hand. Blood runs down the blade, trickling past the hilt and over Sam's thumb, and there's a body in the patch of sunlight on the motel carpet.

The last thing he remembers is catching the burger Dean picked up for dinner. 

Dean strolls over, matching machete in hand. "What's up?"

Sam's whole body feels unsteady, like he's a bookshelf someone put up and is hoping will stay up. He sways and drops to a seat on his rumpled bed covers.

"Sam?"

Sam shakes his head. The body's still there, headless and seeping, and he's still holding the machete. 

"Sam?" Dean's hands land on his shoulders and Sam tries to focus on his face. "Sammy, you with me?"

"I'm with you," he says, and means it. "I feel like I'm still half-asleep."

The tension in Dean's eyes and fingers ebbs. "Early morning vamp attacks'll do that to you." He smiles. "Maybe I should bring back those early morning drills, huh?"

Sam groans. That's an easy memory, Dad's hand on his arm as he hustled the two of them out for an early morning run down to the river and back, and the solidity of it grounds him. He remembers Dean's legs in his track shorts, his own too-small sneakers, the uncomfortably graphic stories Dean used to tell about his dreams the previous night. It's all there, a comforting reminder that he isn't losing his mind just yet.

"Never again," he says with a grimace.

Dean grins and slaps him on the shoulder. "As long as you're not getting sloppy."

He stands, hand on his hip as he looks down at the corpse. The bloodied machete and the severed head tell the story and Sam pieces it together well enough that he can almost remember slicing the vamp's head off.

(Almost.)

Dean holds out his fist. "Winner gets breakfast, loser gets the body?"

Sam throws rock and buys Dean an extra slice of French toast to compensate.

**+++**

The gaps get longer.

Sam blacks out for hours at a time, coming to at crime scenes, cemetaries, and diners with no idea how he got there. They're harder and harder to fill in, with no more blood-stained weapons to help him join the dots, and the more he doesn't know, the harder it is to conceal his confusion from Dean.

They're outside Helena, Montana when he loses an entire day for the first time. Sam falls asleep in the Impala and comes to the next night in a cluster of rotting pumpkins with claw marks on his shoulder. 

He goes to see a doctor the next day.

Dean's busy, following up with a professor at the university, and so Sam has the afternoon free to put as many medical tests on Mr McGillicuddy's insurance as he can. He talks to three different doctors, submits to blood tests, CT scans, MRIs and whatever else is on offer, but as the results trickle in over the following days, Sam's hopes of a quick fix are stripped away one by one.

All the tests agree. Aside from the scratches, he's physically healthy, inside and out.

**+++**

Dean's suspicious as soon as he gets back to the motel and sees the pie on the table.

"What did you do?"

"What?" It's hard to look innocent when he's about to add another boulder to the weight they're both carrying. "Nothing. I just saw in it in the store and figured you'd want a slice. The waitress said it's their speciality."

Dean narrows his eyes but doesn't refuse the pie. Sam waits until his fork is loaded and halfway to his mouth before he says, "But, uh, I need to talk to you about something."

Dean pales faster than the fork drops. 

"It's not-" Sam stops himself. "It could be worse," he says, choosing his words more carefully. "I thought I could deal with it but I…" He takes a seat opposite Dean at the table. "I've been having blackouts."

Dean blinks. "What, like fainting?"

"No. Or at least I don't think so. It's like I'm here one second then everything goes blank and the next thing I know, I'm somewhere different. Like I just skipped part of the day."

There's an expected flare of fear in Dean's eyes but Sam ploughes on. "I thought maybe it was a medical thing. Some kind of residual effect of the trials but I had myself checked out a couple of weeks ago and there's nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Wrong," Sam clarifies. "Not medically at least. They did a full work-up, tests, psych interviews, the whole nine."

The concern on Dean's face turns to disbelief as he says, "So you're not sick? No internal burns or brain damage or anything?"

"Nothing," Sam says, frowning at the smile that Dean's trying to hide. "They couldn't find anything to explain what's causing this."

"Right," Dean says, pushing his smile back down. "Sorry, man, I just- I'm glad you're healthy."

"I'm blacking out for days at a time, Dean," Sam says. He'd braced himself for this talk but not for Dean's apparent delight at his mysterious affliction. "I don't think that counts as healthy."

The smile disappears completely now and solemnity settles in its place as Dean nudges the pie aside and leans on the table. 

"I gotta tell you something," he says. "And I need you to hear me out, okay? If you wanna break my face, that's fine but you need to listen to all-"

When Sam opens his eyes again, he's standing.

Dean's across the room with his back to him, pouring whiskey into a glass on the nightstand. The pie's still on the table, warm and uneaten, and Sam steadies himself on the back of the chair, trying to remember what he missed.

"Dean?" 

Whiskey sloshes over the edge of the glass but Dean doesn't turn around. "Yeah?"

"You were going to tell me something." It's a question, really, a plea for Dean to pick up where Sam's mind left off. "What was it?"

"What?" Dean looks over at him, his innocent expression feigned and fixed. "Oh, nothing."

Solid red fingerwidths are painted across Dean's throat. There's an ache above Sam's knuckles.

Dean's smile is brittle when he meets his eyes. "Forget it, Sam."


End file.
